Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="SweeneyTodd" data-source="post: 4316425" data-attributes="member: 9391">Sorry, I disagree. I think that your interpretation is colored by your personal opinion. It's perfectly possible to roleplay with description and dialog while also using the mechanics ... at the same time. It's cool if you don't want to do that, and would rather "just roleplay" and have the mechanics not be used, but that's just opinion. It's a roleplaying game. The mechanics are there to be invoked when desired. Simply playing the mechanics "flat", without any imagined context, is not going to be an entertaining game, no matter which game it is."I convince him.""Roll Diplomacy.""...18.""He's convinced"Is not how the game's written to be played. That's ignoring the why and just doing the how. Apart from some bad con/demo games, you're not going to see it, and if you do, hey, good time to walk away from the table. You're welcome to the opinion, but reading the books didn't give me the impression that that is the intended style of play at all. (For one thing, it doesn't match the examples given.)I'm pretty confused by this. Are you saying they should have done this, but didn't?Reading the entire PHB and DMG (yes, even the introduction) made it really clear to me that it's a game where you play a fictional character, and that the rules are there to help you do that, not to replace doing that. The idea that "Any roll you're making has to do with some action your character is taking; you should actually describe that action" is totally consistent with the rules as published, and the examples of play given. Obviously you're not supposed to say "I roll athletics to cross the rickety bridge", you're supposed to say "I cross the rickety bridge" (with whatever additional detail you the player would like to add), and then roll to determine the outcome of that action.A naked roll, with no context in the shared imagined space, isn't an action. It isn't anything. It's not play! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />(Realistically I know you can totally have a "naked roll", in that situation your action is implied and the folks at the table know what you meant to do, or else the DM just asks you to clarify. The level of description that's "good enough" is gonna differ for each gaming group. And I think that's a good thing -- the rules could say "You must stand and announce your action in an Olde English accent and say Verily a lot", but what would that accomplish? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> )</blockquote>

Verification